Main Quest Fixes

[nicksta1310]

My suggestion was inspired by my latest run of DFU. It was the first time that I made some progress in the main quest beyond meeting Brisienna and Nulfaga. Most of my post will be hidden behind spoiler tags for obvious reasons.

Spoiler!

I visited Castle Wayrest (eventually) in response to the letter from Morgiah. I decided to talk to the other nobles in the audience chamber before approaching the throne. This was when I had the misfortune of meeting Princess Elysana and accepting Quest ID S0000006 (Elysana's Robe). I think it's the worst quest I've ever played, which is doubly disappointing, because the plot twist and the juxtaposition of Elysana's true character with her 'sweet and innocent' manner could have been moments of sheer brilliance otherwise.

The problems with the quest are three-fold: poorly designed events; sloppy execution; and an inexplicable lack of consequences.

According to UESP, the quest was intended to proceed as follows: you give the robe to Lord Castellian; he thanks you and puts it on, which inadvertently summons Daedra Seducers to kill him; you can fight the Daedra, but it's impossible to save Castellian's life; if you stay in the residence after Castellian's death, then knights will show up, accuse you of murder and attack you; you can fight the knights or flee the residence.

What actually happened was a farcical mess: I gave the robe to Lord Castellian; he thanked me and put it on, which inadvertently killed him instantly; the Daedra Seducers appeared a moment later and I started fighting them; the knights showed up a moment later, ignored the Daedras and attacked me instead, calling me an assassin in the process; I fled the residence and saw that my legal reputation was unchanged, despite being the prime suspect of murdering a noble. I returned to Castle Wayrest without incident and was able to go about my business afterwards as if nothing happened.

The volume of wasted potential combined with the chaotic nonsense is breathtaking to me.

I'm aware of the New Main Quest mod by JayH, but since I have never come close to finishing a first playthrough of Daggerfall, I would prefer to try JayH's mod on a second playthrough, because the description and comments indicate that it solves the problems with the vanilla story by cutting most of its content from the game.

I'm suggesting a mod that takes the middle ground between A New Main Quest and vanilla. Preserve as much of the original story as you can while removing the stuff that's too broken to fix in a satisfactory way.

[Jay_H]

It's not a major change, but with the release of Infighting Quests, enemies such as knights and daedra will now fight each other in the quest machine https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/398

I'm not a massive fan of the vanilla MQ, and people have occasionally talked about rewriting it, with a variety of proposals. If people come up with some good ideas, with any luck we'll see some changes in it.

[Sappho20]

Yes, I agree the main quest is a bit broken or at least illogical in places, the example you give is a good one for its problems.

One of the difficulties is the fact that each quest is standalone and cannot affect other quests. It’s a quirk of the system. I’ve tried to get around these limitations by breaking up a quest into pieces and having a ‘main quest’ but the system has its limits and it’s not easy to add real consequences to a multi quest campaign.

My biggest dislike of the main quest is that it is not proactive. Brisienna tells you to ask about Lysander’s death at the courts of the Iliac Bay, but you can’t. Instead, the quests come to you. I wished that the quest would be more investigation on your part and less waiting for the quests to find you.

This idea would make a very interesting project.

[nicksta1310]

I just thought of an alternative strategy after reading the replies above. Thank you for your replies, by the way.

My understanding of A New Main Quest is that it streamlines the main story to keep it focused and progressing towards the overall objectives.

I wonder if the rest of the vanilla content (or at least a substantial portion of it) could be adapted to a quest pack. This would enable the player to experience the content as a collection of optional side quests instead of appendices to the main quest.

Do quest packs allow mod authors to specify individual NPCs for quest offers instead of random NPCs from a faction?

[Sappho20]

You can make permanent NPC’s like the King of Worms and Queen Barenziah etc, quest givers if you like, but to create your own NPC is different. Below is a link to a list of the main charaters in daggerfall, although some are not in the game and others have been added by Cliffworms' mod 'Famous Faces of the Iliac Bay'
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:People

If you wanted to remake the main quest you can easily give the same characters quests and dialogue and I believe you could make optional quest as side quests if you wanted.
All of the main quests are text files in unity in the quest folder so you can open them up and have a look.

[nicksta1310]

Thank you. I could try to get the ball rolling by drafting a rewrite of the quest I complained about above (after I read the documentation in the Quest Development forum).

I would like to clarify that what I'm suggesting at this point is different from what I suggested in my original post. I no longer believe that starting another main quest remake is the right solution.

The new idea is to repurpose the main story content that was cut from JayH's remake as an optional quest pack that would co-exist with JayH's remake. You would have A New Main Quest installed and then you would have something like, A New Spin-Off Quest Pack. The advantage of doing it this way is that players would have the opportunity to experience more of the story without weighing down the structure and pacing of the main quest.

[jayhova]

There are some ways you could address this. I have to agree that being unable to bring up the quest to the principles creates a lack of verisimilitude. Of course it is also reasonable for the royalty involved to question your ability to accomplish the quest or how little they trust you with specific tasks. This seems like a good opportunity for these people to send you out on fetch quests or other things to build your reputation and experience. A simple my people are watching and when I feel you are ready I'll let you know, would make it feel less like a triggered event.

[nicksta1310]

There are some ways you could address this. I have to agree that being unable to bring up the quest to the principles creates a lack of verisimilitude. Of course it is also reasonable for the royalty involved to question your ability to accomplish the quest or how little they trust you with specific tasks. This seems like a good opportunity for these people to send you out on fetch quests or other things to build your reputation and experience. A simple my people are watching and when I feel you are ready I'll let you know, would make it feel less like a triggered event.

If the player was able to bring up the quest to the principles, then it would be unreasonable for the royalty to 'test' the player with fetch quests, because the player is following direct orders from the Emperor. Furthermore, some of these fetch quests are even more sensitive than the main quest, so if the royalty had doubts about you, then I don't know why they would trust you with top secret letters that would be disastrous in the wrong hands (I'm looking at you, Morgiah).

[jayhova]

If the player was able to bring up the quest to the principles, then it would be unreasonable for the royalty to 'test' the player with fetch quests, because the player is following direct orders from the Emperor. Furthermore, some of these fetch quests are even more sensitive than the main quest, so if the royalty had doubts about you, then I don't know why they would trust you with top secret letters that would be disastrous in the wrong hands (I'm looking at you, Morgiah).

I say "bring up the quest" in the loosest of terms. Of course, your orders are secret and the fact that the emperor himself gave orders for you to investigate is not generally known. This does not mean you could not ply for information. Again, rather than having to wait you could build trust with particular nobles who might tell you that they have a job in mind but their advisors tell them you would die trying to accomplish it because you are a novice.

[nicksta1310]

...build trust with particular nobles who might tell you that they have a job in mind but their advisors tell them you would die trying to accomplish it because you are a novice.

DFU already has the "you're not ready yet" speech for at least one quest that's level-gated (the first one from Aubk-i), probably because there was no letter for it and she was completely silent otherwise.

I believe there's a more elegant solution than "don't call us, we'll call you" or "do this specific thing first to convince me that you're good enough." At least the setup for Morgiah's quest is more sensible in that she's taking advantage of your situation for her own ends, although I believe that more failure conditions are needed (I won't go into detail here, because the spoiler tag doesn't work after a quote). I also appreciate Lhotun's way of saying, "do this for me before I help you," because the fact that you're an outsider is exactly why he needs you.

The UESP indicates that the character's factional reputation can be a prerequisite for quests. Furthermore, completing a quest improves reputation with more than one associated faction. For example, completing quests for the commoners or nobles of a region also improves your reputation with the royalty of the same region by a small amount. Therefore, a royal could say at first, "I am busy with urgent matters. Begone." However, when your reputation is high enough, the royal could say, "Ah, so you are (character name). I have heard of your good deeds in (region name). To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"